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Foraging: 1) to wander in search of food or provisions; 2) to conduct a search, to rummage. Take the commonplace, or the extraordinary, it doesn’t matter. Observe, learn, be curious. Make it count. Make it special, exceptional. But stay baffled. You’re in the Northwest. Photography as foraging: the analogy suits me most of the time. Visual curiosity takes over at some point and it becomes an attentive, methodical endeavor, one angle leading to the next. You might just surprise yourself […]

Ain’t nothing bring you down like your hometown – Steve Earle sings ‘Hometown Blues‘, and he’s right but he’s lying – you can tell by that rhythm and the juicy slide on the steel guitar. It’s not the blues, it’s another color. Hometown Mauve? Taupe? Puce? It’s not a colour you’ll find on any paint chit, that’s for sure. There’s some Melancholy Blue in there, yep, but faded and muddied by Reality Check Brown. Mall Beige, Hamburger Asphalt Grey, some […]

The word facade boasts 2 definitions. The front of a building that looks onto a street or public space. An outward appearance that is maintained to conceal a less pleasant or creditable reality. Sad that the second of these should seem a facetious jab at the first. I guess that’s why I’m drawn to shop fronts that spit in the face of conventional prettiness, where decay or neglect has long since exposed all pretensions. Or sometimes it’s just a plain […]

He was grateful for breeze block cafés, but he was never sure why. It wasn’t the food, generic Western Chinese fare mostly, ubiquitous and regretful. It might have been the coffee, but wasn’t – not the flavour, no, certainly not the kick of it (for there was none), not the stout little cup, a teaspoon clinking pleasantly. And not the service either. Though in truth he valued service not at all, good or poor. Maybe it came down to the […]